Thing that made me cry; things that make me smile

The first part of today's post is heavy on the finer details of women's haircuts. If you'd prefer to skip said details, proceed to the paragraph that begins "And I dealt with it..."

So.

Last week was very stressful, with Mary approaching burnout, feeling like I hadn't read enough (particularly theory) and being tired from pushing myself all summer. As a result I'd been teary all week, and in this fragile, coffee-less state I got a haircut. I had considered cancelling the appointment, but I didn't want to bother with the hassle of rescheduling.

I went down to the Aveda Academy Salon on Whyte, where I've been getting my haircut for a few years. This time, for the first time, I got an educator instead of a student. The first question she asked me was, "What do you like about your hair?" I'm not exactly into hair therapy, so I answered something vague like, "I like the cut, I like the length..." Warning sign #1: She then pressed down on my collar bone and told me that she thought the ideal length for my hair was there. I thought, okay, she's an educator, she knows these things. She added that she would touch up the layers around my face. I added that I still wanted to be able to pull my hair back in a ponytail, and she said that I could do that, but [Warning sign #2] would need to use pins. In my mind, I thought that the front layers would go to my shoulders and that the rest of the hair would fall accordingly. She added that my hair would "fall to my shoulders."

I then got my hair washed and began to think about exactly what "falling to the shoulders" meant. I get back to the chair and rather than say something to clarify, let her proceed with the cut. My glasses were off but I could vaguely make out 4-inch pieces of hair falling to my lap. When the cut was dried and I put on my glasses again, the hair was indeed short. MUCH shorter than what I wanted when I walked into the salon 45 minutes earlier.

And I dealt with it the only way I knew how at that moment. I started to cry. In the salon chair.

Now, I know that hair grows back. But trust me: it wasn't really about the hair.

Nonetheless, crying in a salon chair does have its upside: My next haircut is free, and I get VIP treatment. Granted, that won't be for a few months because I have to grow it out again. The worse part of it is that anyone I saw for the rest of that week didn't even notice that my hair was considerably shorter. I attribute this to the fact that I haven't seen many people all summer and that I was hiding it in a very short ponytail (that I indeed had to use hairpins for).

And now, on the plus side, some things that have been making me smile and/or laugh lately:

Weezer's music video with the Muppets! (Thanks to Ross for reminding me about this)
R-rated animated video that's cute and vulgar at the same time. (Thanks, I think, to Jeff for this)
The science-project-gone-mad Diet Coke and Mentos fountain.

It wasn't a bad haircut; it just wasn't the hair cut that I wanted.